Presentation systems in classroom or conference room settings often require a number of different electronic multimedia devices that are separately present without systematic linkage. Devices often employed include                Document Cameras, which capture video or still images of documents or 3D objects;        A personal computer that often acts as the hub for multiple devices to function together in a loosely connected way;        An interactive whiteboard that allows on screen annotations to be written over images projected onto a whiteboard;        An audience response system that collects real time feedback from the audience.        
Presenters are often faced with the challenge of making all of these disparate and often complex apparatuses work together before an effective presentation can be conducted. “Plugging” all apparatuses into a personal computer can encounter multiple potential errors in the process. A system with these components is also expensive.
With respect to a document camera, it is often necessary to have a document camera or other imaging similar device on hand to capture a document image or a 3D object image and project them onto a screen so that there are target images to annotate over, or for the room to interact with. Such a document camera is almost always an item independent from the rest of the system.
Whole different sets of devices are required in order to receive real time feedback from an audience during a presentation. There is often a receiver, which is connected to a personal computer, with a number of TV remote control like devices in the hands of the audience to submit real time feedback data. The personal computer will utilize software on itself to collect feedback data through the receiver, and then gather statistics before sending the statistics as numeric or graphical reports on screen.
Personal Computers are often the center for “gluing” all pieces together, connecting the document camera, taking input from the whiteboard and sending video output to projectors for displaying images and annotations real time on screen. Users also use the personal computer as the primary tool for preparing and editing content for the presentation.
An interactive whiteboard (hereinafter referred to as “IWB”) is a large interactive display that connects to a computer and projector. A computer's desktop is projected onto a whiteboard's surface and users control the computer using a pen, finger, stylus, or other device. The board is typically mounted to a wall or floor stand. IWB's are used in a variety of settings, including classrooms at all levels of education, in corporate boardrooms and work groups, in training rooms for professional sports coaching, in broadcasting studios and others. Uses for interactive whiteboards may include:                Running software that is loaded onto the connected PC, such as a web browsers or proprietary software used in the classroom;        Capturing and saving notes written on a whiteboard to the connected PC;        Capturing notes written on a graphics tablet connected to the whiteboard;        Online whiteboard usage;        Controlling a PC from the white board using click and drag, which annotates a program or presentation;        Using OCR software to translate cursive writing on a graphics tablet into text; and        Using an Audience Response System so that presenters can poll a classroom audience or conduct quizzes, capturing feedback onto the whiteboard.        
The majority of IWBs sold globally involve one of four forms of interaction between the user and the content projected on the whiteboard. These are an infrared scan technology, a resistive, touch-based board, an electromagnetic pen and associated software, and an ultrasonic pen. An infrared interactive whiteboard is a large interactive display that connects to a computer and projector. Movement of a user's finger, pen, or other pointer over the image projected on the whiteboard is captured by its interference with infrared light at the surface of the whiteboard. When the whiteboard surface is pressed, software triangulates the location of the marker or stylus. Infrared IWBs may be made of any material (no dry-erase markers are involved) and may be found in many settings, including various levels of classroom education, corporate boardrooms, training or activity rooms for organizations, professional sports coaching facilities, and broadcasting studios.
A touch-based IWB also involves a simple pointing device. In this case, the material of the board is important. In the most common resistive system, a membrane stretched over the surface deforms under pressure to make contact with a conducting backplate. The touch point location can then be determined electronically and registered as a mouse event. For example, when a finger is pressed on the surface, it is registered as the equivalent of a left mouse click. Again, such a board requires no special instruments. This leads to the claim of resistive systems manufacturers that such a whiteboard is easy and natural to use. It is, however, heavily dependent on the construction of the board itself.
An electromagnetic pen-based interactive IWB involves an array of wires embedded behind a solid board surface that interacts with a coil in the stylus's tip to determine the horizontal and vertical coordinates of the stylus. The pen itself usually is passive, i.e., it contains no batteries or other power source; rather, it alters the electrical signals produced by the board. For instance, when close to the surface of the board, the mouse pointer can be sensed, giving the board “mouse-over” capabilities. When it is pressed in against the board in one way, the board activates a switch in the pen to signal a mouse click to the computer; pressed in another way, contact with the board signals a click of the right mouse-button.
A Wii-based IR system was created by Johnny Chung Lee, PhD. in 2007. Lee claimed that the system “[m]akes a technology available to a much wider percentage of the population” (Speaking at Technology Entertainment and Design Conference, April 2008) by using an ordinary Wii remote control as a pointer and the IR camera on the front of the remote control as tracking device sensing light from an IR light pen. Lee produced several videos on YouTube about this system to demonstrate its operability, flexibility, and ease of use, and pointing out its modest price—the most expensive part is the infrared LED of the pen. This is an approach with a shallow learning curve since the gaming system is already familiar to many. A large programming support community may be available, both in open source and commercial offerings. However, the system cannot be used near direct sunlight, nor can it share the software of manufacturers of the IWB-types already mentioned. Certain considerations about the Bluetooth connection of the light pen also apply. Two lines of sight are involved (the controller and the pen) in the case of rear-projection.
An interactive projector IWB involves a CMOS camera built into the projector, so that the projector produces an IWB image, but also detects the position of an active IR light pen when it contacts the surface where the IWB image is projected. This solution, like the other IR whiteboard systems, can suffer from potential problems caused by ‘line of sight’ between the pen and the projector/receiver and does not provide mouse-over capability found in other solutions.
In some classrooms, interactive whiteboards have replaced traditional whiteboards or flipcharts, or video/media systems such as a DVD player and TV combination. Even where traditional boards are used, the IWB often supplements them by connecting to a school network digital video distribution system. In other cases, IWBs interact with online shared annotation and drawing environments such as interactive vector based graphical websites.
Software supplied with the interactive whiteboard will usually allow a teacher to keep notes and annotations as an electronic file for later distribution either on paper or through a number of electronic formats. In addition, some interactive whiteboards allow teachers to record their instruction as digital video files and post the material for review by students at a later time. This can be a very effective instructional strategy for students who benefit from repetition, who need to see the material presented again, for students who are absent from school, for struggling learners, and for review for examinations. Brief instructional blocks can be recorded for review by students they will see the exact presentation that occurred in the classroom with the teacher's audio input. This can help transform learning and instruction.
One recent use of the IWB is in shared reading lessons. Mimic books, for instance, allow teachers to project children's books onto the interactive whiteboard with book-like interactivity.
Some manufacturers provide classroom response systems as an integrated part of their interactive whiteboard products. Handheld ‘clickers’ operating via Infrared or Radio signals, for example, offer basic multiple choice and polling options. More sophisticated clickers offer text and numeric responses and can export an analysis of student performance for subsequent review. One drawback with handheld clickers, however, is that an operator has to learn how to write on a tablet that provides no feedback, i.e., does not show pencil marks, while looking at whiteboard or other projection screen. This is difficult and, as such, a need exists for a tablet that operates in a manner that allows a user to visualize writing directly on the tablet while simultaneously transmitting in real time what is written on the tablet to a whiteboard or other projection screen. Because of the limitations on wireless transmission bandwidth, such operability is difficult to achieve, especially with video. Previous remedies have included a pad or “slate” wirelessly coupled to a PC, which is wired to an IWB. Again, the pad does not provide instant feedback to a user so the user must constantly refer to the whiteboard to determine if what he is writing on the pad is accurate.
A need exists for an efficient way to show the user what he's writing on the pad, possibly through the use of video transmission of what is appearing on the pad as it is being written. However, when video is transmitted, quite a large amount of infounation is transmitted. Every frame has multiple megabits of data. To transmit data, Wi-Fi bandwidth typically would not accommodate the necessities of transmitting real time HD video for an IWB. The only way to transmit over Wi-Fi is to provide compression on a sending end and decompression on a receiving end. However, compression compromises the integrity of the transmission.
The present system cures the drawbacks of the above mentioned systems.